I'm Italian and my history teacher told us that one of the reasons hitler was late in invading Russia (and being late influenced his defeat there heavily) was that German troops had to go save Itaky's ass after Mussolini decided to invade Greece for no good reason and lose too.

Which is false. Germany's intervention in Russia was delayed by bad weather. And Germany was already intervening in the Balkans due to Yugoslavia joining and then defecting from the Axis. Greece (where the situation had become stationary months before Germany's intervention) was an excuse used by Hitler & co., much later, to blame their failure in Russia on Italy, as usual.

I haven't seen that before (not italian)- are those guys just trolling/trying to piss people off, or is it like a trenchant satire about what italians think about migrants? It's fucking hilarious in the darkest possible way. Jesus.

I mean, it depends on how you look at it. I was a big fan growing up because his songs were just absurd. It was also a bit of a parody of the Italian rap scene at the time in a sense that the scene was primarily focused on things like love and bragging about being the best rapper and occasionally weed. Every once in a while they'd rap about making it from the streets (think streets like being poor and maybe selling drugs, not like gang violence, shooting and stabbing streets) and yadda yadda, but generally it was very sentimental. What he did was basically introduce early 2010s trap music turned to 11, to the point of pirating most of his beats. Not exactly: think less violence and more Versace by Migos or Pretty Boy Swag by Soulja Boy. It was loud, it was in your face, and it played towards black stereotypes of being lazy, entitled, not speaking properly, being hung (he literally has a song called "Io ce l'ho grosso" = "My dick is big"), the classics. He'd made politicalish songs before, like Swag Berlusconi or Matteo Renzi where he'd sort of boast about being powerful or rich like them, but Non Pago Affitto is what propelled him to a household name since it basically stated all the stereotypes about immigration and did it in a way that made him seem proud. I'm personally of the opinion that it's somewhat a persona, from that song onwards, since he hit all the right buttons to gain attention in a way that showed he had at least a superficial understanding of politics at the time. His flow, rhyming and delivery also showed signs of getting better for a time in a way that makes me believe he could actually pull off a proper, serious trap song if he spent more than a dayish on the lyrics. I've also seen him live and he's a great performer and knows how to work a crowd, as well as the fact he turned his YouTube success into actually touring Italy. I outgrew his music since I feel like it got a bit stale and formulaic, but I don't consider him a bad artist, as he consistently put out bangers for years, cranking out songs every few days.

Sort of both, maybe neither. I don't think it really matters. Maybe he just wants to trigger the right (and he is incredibely good at that). Maybe he just enjoys shitposting. Maybe it was a plan to become viral. We can be sure he is not serious, at least.

Check out the legendary dab (minute 6:00) he made 3 years ago against Mussolini's niece.